Do you know of any other god story that says that god personally came down from Heaven to die for us, so we could have life?
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SHIN, first of all, you do realize that other believers in your same god do say that hell is a hot and fiery place and we bad people get to spend eternity there, right. So your casual dismissal of that as a possible fate does not make a higher quality hell more likely. It only provides yet another alternative offered by insider interpretations of the bible.
But as for the part I quoted: No other gods came down and died for us because no other gods determined that we were assholes from the get go. No other gods condemned us via our own naïve and uneducated actions. No other gods assumed that one casual mention about one specific tree would determine the fate of all mankind. No other gods have been so unforgiving nor so relentless in pursuing our faults. No other gods are so big into tough love.
No other gods have needed a self-sacrifice because no other gods built it into their story. When, in the story, JC shows up, his death by horrible means is absolutely required or you guys don't have a tale/lesson/myth worth the paper it is scribed on. You need the exciting (something other religions have too) and you need the harmed god (which other religions have) and you need the arrest and the betrayal and the various versions of the resurrection to happen, or christianity has nothing. Or in your case, catholicism has nothing.
It is a story. It sounds great to many people because it has been finely honed over the centuries. It sounds great because all obvious flaws were erased long ago. It sounds great because religious scholars, already sucked into the story, have spent almost 20 centuries via apologetics and other efforts to confirm its truth. But it remains a story. And that you are impressed with it means only that yourself and others believe it. That doesn't mean that it is true.
That your version doesn't match other versions of the story is consistent with untruths, not truths. That literally tens of thousands of versions of christianity exist does not make for a good argument FOR the bible. That I personally have been told by various local christians that my fate as a non-christian is hell and brimstone, or hell without the brimstone, or not hell at all, means that folks are a bit confused. Of course, you as a catholic, so happy that you are following the original myth (with recent clarifications/corrections/adjustments as required by political and social pressures) only means that you can walk around proudly saying that your religion has the longest history amongst them. Others, not catholic, walk around extremely happy that the founders of their version figured out the truth and broke away from the mess that was/is the catholic church.
Now I realize you will dismiss this with, at most, one partial sentence. If that. You will scoff and laugh and shake your head and say something funny in Portuguese and then whip out a wise-ass response in english and be done with what I have written. So if your goal is to help me confirm all my prejudices against religion in general and catholicism in general, please do that. See if you can keep your response down to one word that will amaze us all with its clarity and wisdom. Or one word that will insult every cell in my body. Or one word that will redefine sarcasm from this moment on in history.
Hey, even a video. Yea, that's it. Post a video. YouTube, that shining example of human triumph and endeavor and truth has so many completely accurate resources that you could go there and find something to counter me, I'm sure. Do that. Enlightenment at 720p was probably mentioned in the bible, so do it.
Or actually say something. That would throw the rest of us off but I, for one, am willing to risk it.
